


All the Way Back

by missmollyetc



Category: Captain America (2011), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-08
Updated: 2012-03-08
Packaged: 2017-11-01 15:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/pseuds/missmollyetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist - One of these things is NOT okay with Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Way Back

**Author's Note:**

> written for reginagiraffe! For the prompt: Steve/Tony (Avengers), Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist - One of these things is NOT okay with Steve.

Stark's--Tony's kitchen was half something out of a Rex Stout novel and half...Steve didn't know, Buck Rogers maybe; all gleaming tile backsplashes and blonde wood cabinets and an entire damned counter full of...gadgetry stuck into the wall with curving hoses. Steve sat down at the head of the kitchen table and leaned back in the hard-backed chair, hooking his ankles around the table leg. The slate floor was cold enough to curl his bare toes. He breathed in slowly, tilting his head up to the pot lights in the ceiling. The bubbling hiss of water trickling into a pot made him open his eyes, automatically twisting towards the stove where...the coffee pot wasn't.

"Thirty degrees to your right, Captain," JARVIS said, from the speaker mounted above the doorway.

"Thanks," Steve said, and flicked his eyes upwards, even as heat brushed across his cheeks. The steel oven glinted under the lights that had turned on automatically when he'd walked in. Coffee wasn't boiled on the stove anymore; robots did it somewhere else, and it only made people laugh when you tried to look a house in the eyes. Steve was living in the future. Hell, he might as well have been living with Flash Gordon.

"Did you put the coffee on?" he asked, closing his eyes. He put his elbows on the wooden table, and cupped his jaw in both hands, folding his palms over his mouth.

"Yes, Captain. Mr. Stark's standing orders are to prepare coffee when my sensors indicate movement in the mansion's kitchen."

Steve nodded, and took a deep breath through his nose. The scent of coffee grew stronger. He rubbed his hands up from his mouth to his forehead and back, and then dropped his hands flat to the tabletop, rubbing the smooth varnish underneath his hands. He couldn't find a scratch on the surface.

"You get a lot of people down here this late?" he asked.

"As of last month, the household has averaged a forty percent increase in kitchen foot traffic within acceptable time limits to necessitate activating the--"

Steve giggled, and then clamped his mouth shut, ducking his head. He snorted at the tabletop, and squeezed his eyelids more tightly shut.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm a little tired."

"Not at all, Captain," JARVIS said, "Mr. Stark frequently finds statistics humorous as well."

Steve snorted again, and licked his lips. "Right," he said. "I'll bet. So you just...make coffee any time somebody comes down here? What if they don't want coffee?"

"The mansion has an excellent waste management system," JARVIS said.

Steve nodded, and opened his eyes. "Right," he said.

Sure, just...make coffee and throw it out. Why not? Tony was the butter and egg man; probably had a household budget big enough to cover enough wasted food to feed the Macy's Day parade. Why wouldn't he tell his robot butler to make it any time some joe popped their head in? Just in case they wanted a cup.

"Your coffee is ready, sir," JARVIS said. "Mugs are located--"

"Mugs? Screw mugs, big J, just unhook that nozzle from the water lines and pour directly into my mouth."

Steve turned in his chair, unhooking his feet from the table leg, as Tony breezed by him, half-naked and covered in grease from the bristling points of his dark hair to the frayed cuffs of his dungarees. Steve blinked.

"Are you...smoking?" he asked, wrinkling his nose.

"What? No, I put that out hours ago," Tony muttered over his shoulder. He shook his head, and little black bits flew up into the air around him. He walked straight up to the largest metal gewgaw on the far kitchen counter, opened the top, and pulled out two thick, white pewter mugs from a hidden shelf. He set the mugs on a grill inset below it with one hand, and closed the lid with the other. The mugs where spaced evenly between two nozzles with a practiced nudge of Tony's fingers, catching twin bursts of coffee before they splashed on the counter.

Barring coddling and house arrest, the future had come with a debriefing packet and a close-mouthed suit named Coulson, but Steve figured one thing pretty much straight off by himself. Everybody was rich in the future--Steve had over thirty _thousand_ in back pay--and everybody was still flat broke, except for Tony. Bucky would have laughed his ass off, and tried to soak Tony at pool--or maybe hit him, it'd been sixty-forty with Howard some days.

Tony yawned, and reached up to scratch beneath the strap of his undershirt, spreading what Steve really hoped wasn't soot all over his shoulder. He picked up one of the mugs, ignoring how the spray shut off automatically, and tilted it towards his mouth, half-way to gulping before his lips touched the rim. Steve winced, eying the amount of steam pouring off the top of the cup.

"You want one of these?" Tony asked, sticking the mug back onto the tray and picking up the next one. He took a long drag off the top, and wiggled the fingers of his free hand at the covered shelf.

"Not really," Steve said. "It doesn't do much for me these days."

"Sacrilege," Tony muttered around the rim of his second mug.

Steve shrugged, and drummed his fingers on the table. Tony turned around and, crossing his ankles, leaned against the counter. He had a greasy outline of goggles around both eyes, and a dirty bandage wrapped around his thumb, tapping against the mug.

"You're up...late?" Tony asked, flicking his eyes up towards the door.

"It is currently 0300 hours, sir," JARVIS said, "on Monday the sixteenth of April."

Tony shrugged. "It's late somewhere," he said. "Anyway, what's buzzin', cousin?"

Steve's jaw clenched so fast he almost caught the tip of his tongue. He pressed his fingertips into the table, while Tony smirked at him over the rim of his mug. Tony was the only one left who liked watching him snap his cap--watching him get angry over how even the language Steve used made no sense anymore. Two weeks ago, he'd pulled up next to Steve at the bar a couple of blocks from SHIELD's HQ, leaned his head back, and asked him if he was rationed. He'd even called him _Sugar._

"Nothing much," he said. "I was just up. Thought I'd see if there was some cereal around."

Tony lowered his cup, and rested it against his breastbone, apparently unconcerned about how much oil transferred from his body to the mug. "Probably," he said. "Did you add it to the file?"

Steve shrugged, and glanced down at the kitchen table. Ten little dimples in the wood in the exact shape of his fingerprints gleamed in the overhanging lamplight. Damn it. He shoved his palms over them, and looked up at Tony's slowly twitching smirk.

"I might've forgotten to add it to the list. Agent Coulson's packet included the...u, r, l," he said carefully. "But I still haven't--I mean, I'm still getting used to..."

He shrugged, and Tony watched him. Steve slumped back into his chair, and shrugged again. "People--I just used to make lists," he said, "and leave them on the breadbox."

"Well, now we keep 'em in shared folders on dedicated servers," Tony said, twisting around to pick up his first coffee mug and replace his second. The coffee hissed out of the machine on cue.

"Drink your coffee," Tony said, setting the mug onto the table close enough that the heat prickled the skin of Steve's fingertips.

He grabbed the nearest chair, twirled it, and straddled the seat, digging a flat, black plastic rectangle out of his hip pocket in the same smooth motion.

"How long it take you to master that move?" Steve asked, catching the rectangle against his chest when Tony threw it.

"Two weeks," Tony said, "but I'm drinking a lot less now. So, step one: JARVIS?"

"Yes, sir?" JARVIS asked.

"Standing order, household shopping, section Great Justice, two--hot or cold?"

He raised his eyebrows, and Steve blinked. "Sorry?" he asked, looking down at the--it was a StarkPhone, he remembered that now. Tony'd shipped a ton over to SHIELD after losing a bet to Hawkeye over something they both refused to tell Steve about.

"Hot cereal or cold cereal? Fruit all mixed in, or at the bottom--waiting to be stirred?"

Steve clutched the phone a little more tightly. "Hot," he said. "I like Malt-O-Meal. With honey."

"JARVIS, Malt-O-Meal and honey for the good captain," Tony said, without looking away.

"Very good, sir," JARVIS said.

Tony leaned forward, and poked the top of his phone, pressing it more heavily into Steve's hands. The screen flickered to life. Steve squinted.

"Why do you have a photo of Happy wearing a toga as your background?"

"Because it will never stop being funny," Tony said. "Now, tap twice on his right nipple, and let's teach you about peer to peer networks."

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the only opportunity I'll ever have to use that line from BioDome--which, sadly, also forces me to say that I have seen BioDome, much less remembered it. ::grins::


End file.
